What's your favorite game ending? (Spoilers)

I'm all for being negative on the internet, but I love balance. So, in conjunction with thinking about piece of shit endings, what is your favorite ending from a video game?

Call me a hipster, but I love the ending to Limbo. The puzzle before it implicates that your character may have died in a car crash through the quiet, poignant imagery of flying through the glass and returning to a similar position and area as where you started. I love the quiet approach to the female silhouette, illuminated by some light above under a ladder. After the credits, you see their corpses at the same spot, under a rotted ladder.

I love endings that leave the player to interpret what happened. I have always assumed that their spirits moved on, up the ladder, leaving their physical bodies to rot in Limbo.

EDIT: This forum idea may be played out already, and if so I'm sorry, but, hey, it's Sunday, and on the internet that means not much is happening. So why don't you stay awhile and spin a yarn of some great games?

I've only ever completed one game, so I'll go with that; Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Halo 3, and Halo: Reach are my favorite.

Halo 3 ended exactly how i wanted it, with closure and everyone acknowledging how awesome The Chief is. Halo: Reach just surprised me how they tied everything together at the end, just made me think how developed that universe already was while they were making Halo 1, and i just didn't realize it.

Yeah, this thread's been done so many times, but oh well. My answer has always stayed the same: Persona 3 FES.

• Events leading up to the final battle were great (final climb in Tartarus, final encounters with Strega, Nyx's arrival)
• Best final boss I've experienced by far. The music, its symbolism, its quotes... everything made it awesome. It was a long fight, but that made it even better and more significant.
• Excellent and moving resolution involving the characters you've come to know throughout the game.

Persona 4 didn't live up to its predecessor's ending, which was a bummer.

A couple of great endings come to mind. Metal gear solid 3 had a great ending a great poignant final battle to a great game. Portal2 also had a great comedic ending with a strangely touching ending. But my top choice would be Shadow of the colossus or Halo Reach. The twist at the end of colossus and how you build such a connection to a silent character was brilliant. The end of reach showed just how emotional that series could be as all the characters were well characterized and you genuinely cared when they died. it was also great how they seamlessly lead into Halo:CE and tied everything up so neatly.

Easy, Arkham City

I liked the ending monologue from MGS. It was great.

• RDR (duh)
• Resident Evil 2
• InFAMOUS - both of 'em, especially the 'heroic' endings.
• MGS
• MGS3
• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
• God of War 2
• Dragon's Dogma
• GTAIV - both are pretty great, though I probably prefer 'revenge' because 'deal' was so goddamn depressing.
• Shadow of Rome
• Saints Row 2 - more so for the 'secret ending' featuring Julius
• Saints Row The Third - more so the Gangstas in Space ending.
• Dragon Age: Origins - perhaps a little too 'clean' for some, but I really enjoyed how everything wrapped and how there's so many variables that take effect, even if the ending itself can't be altered all that drastically besides whether your warden lives or dies.
• KOTOR - The evil ending I really liked for how gleefully sadistic it is.
• Journey
• Silent Hill 2 - The Mary ending, dog and ufo are the three that stand out.
• Tekken - speaking for the franchise, since it'd be tough single out so many. The Kuma, Paul Phoenix, Williams sisters and Kazuya endings are often the most memorable.

Mass Effect 3...LOL! just kidding I've never even played the game.

Max Payne 2- the best ending when you finish on the hardest difficulty 'I had a dream of my wife. She was dead.....But it was all right.'

Also, maybe the ending of ME1 cause its epic.

I loved the ending to RDR. It was just amazing.

MGS Series, love every ending for what they are. And Eternal Darkness when you beat each of the 3 alignments, it's fantastic and I never saw that coming, brilliant

Mass Effect 1 is the most recent game in my memory of having a really good ending (I haven't played ME2 yet).

Eternal Darkness, Red Dead Redemption, IDK..., I play so many games it can be hard to think of most of them.

EDIT: Grim Fandango has an amazing ending.

Ico.

Cos I love watermelons.

@mot: Sweet picture, dude. Nice to see the Ed Edd and Eddy love still going strong.

Easy for me. Shadow of the Colossus. And nothing close for second. The ending threw the entire working premise of the game up in the air and recolored all of your actions up to that point in a very cool way. It didn't come across as left field or forced in any way. Artistic and meaningful without seeming like it was trying too hard. I haven't seen anything else quite like it.

@Sean2206 said:

A couple of great endings come to mind. Metal gear solid 3 had a great ending a great poignant final battle to a great game. Portal2 also had a great comedic ending with a strangely touching ending. But my top choice would be Shadow of the colossus or Halo Reach. The twist at the end of colossus and how you build such a connection to a silent character was brilliant. The end of reach showed just how emotional that series could be as all the characters were well characterized and you genuinely cared when they died. it was also great how they seamlessly lead into Halo:CE and tied everything up so neatly.

What he said, minus Reach, which I have not played.

Bayonetta

Saints Row The Third

@biggiedubs: Thank you!

Sonic 2 on Megadrive and MS2 were epic.

Twisted Metal 2 endings were good for the twists Calypso would pull.

RDR

@CyborgDuo said:

Call me a hipster, but I love the ending to Limbo. The puzzle before it implicates that your character may have died in a car crash through the quiet, poignant imagery of flying through the glass and returning to a similar position and area as where you started. I love the quiet approach to the female silhouette, illuminated by some light above under a ladder. After the credits, you see their corpses at the same spot, under a rotted ladder.

You could've put this in a spoiler alert. Just saying.

Persona 3 FES, Digital Devil Saga 2 and Nier are probably my favourites.

I thought the Portal 2 ending was pretty damn brilliant. Probably not the best one I've ever seen, but the one that comes to my mind right now.

For whatever reason I really, really like No More Heroes' ending.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. That ending was so CRAZY! SO CRAZY! I couldn't believe that it ended with Gabriel as Dracula! SO CRAZY! Can't wait for the sequel.

Mass Effect 1 is simply brilliant, and is my high point of the series.

COD 4, Ocarina of Time, RDR and Dead Space 2 are up there to.

@Sean2206 said:

A couple of great endings come to mind. Metal gear solid 3 had a great ending a great poignant final battle to a great game. Portal2 also had a great comedic ending with a strangely touching ending. But my top choice would be Shadow of the colossus or Halo Reach. The twist at the end of colossus and how you build such a connection to a silent character was brilliant. The end of reach showed just how emotional that series could be as all the characters were well characterized and you genuinely cared when they died. it was also great how they seamlessly lead into Halo:CE and tied everything up so neatly.

Man I agree about Shadow of the Colossus but I was really disappointed with the story of Reach. I didn't care about any of the characters, there were all just boring marines and none of their deaths provoked any emotional reaction from me. I felt there was huge potential for a gripping, touching story but that game just didn't deliver it for me.

@Rebel_Scum: Sorry! I thought by putting the entire forum in spoiler mode that would be OK.

Vagrant Story.  Skip to around 5:35, then to 12:20.  Spoilers, dumbass.
 
  

Chrono Trigger had the most satisfying, feel-good ending I've experienced in a JRPG ever.

Actually, I'd also agree with Persona 3 FES although I kinda appreciated how bittersweet the end of the Journey was more so than the Answer.

It's hard to think of my absolute favorite, but I really enjoyed the endings of Final Fantasy X, Full Throttle (the game might have been brief, but that ending!), and most of the endings from Twisted Metal Black.

I liked the ending to Skyrim's main quest. OK, it wasn't particularly difficult or anything, but it did come across as quite "epic" and took you to some interesting locales.

Portal 2's ending is pretty good.

Super Metroid

And, finally, Jak 3. That whole fight was really good because it took pretty much everything you'd learned over the course of the game and made you use it, from vehicle driving around the desert to platforming and then finally shooting.

Oh, and Resistance 2 had one bad melon farmer of an ending.

Mafia probably. I was around 8-9 when I played it, to this day it had the most emotional effect on me.

Mass Effect 1: It's my all-time favorite X-Box game, and I thought the ending was perfect. It ended in a way that was completely satisfying and left things open for a sequel, instead of just ending abruptly (like Halo 2 for example).

@Nightriff said:

MGS Series, love every ending for what they are. And Eternal Darkness when you beat each of the 3 alignments, it's fantastic and I never saw that coming, brilliant

I found the final ED ending AMAZING, loved that game sooo much

whilst not giving a shit about the story at all, i really liked the ending to Halo Reach as well, the characters dying was predictable, but the specific way the player characters die i was not expecting, and it lent a real emotional weight to the whole thing

the end of my Civ 5 game the other day was pretty fucking epic, i ended up losing diplomatically, so nuked the shit out of everything, pretty petty of me really, but i had spent a long time on that game

other than that, i cant really think of many game endings that have impressed me that much, most of my favourite games tend to peak a bit before the ending, i guess FFxiii's ending was pretty cool

I made a list about this! (some of those aren't filled out yet btw) I have admittedly pretty weird taste in endings, and if something fucked up doesn't happen then I probably don't care. Also all of those endings are from a story standpoint, with games I think it's important to distinguish between that and stuff like "Final Level" or "Last Boss."

This is always a tough question for video games, because the "story ending" and the "gameplay ending" are almost always two separate parts... you beat the boss, put down the controller, and then watch a little movie telling you how cool you are.

I think that's why the endings that don't do that, and actually use a change in core gameplay to communicate the big, final change in the story, are the best-- because they're the ones that actually follow through on the unique potential of telling a story through a game. (And no, QTEs don't count.)

That's why games like Shadow of the Colossus, Braid, Red Dead, and even Super Metroid always seem to make up the highest class of ending that currently exists for games-- because the big emotional moment is the part where the way you play the game changes, too.

Most recently I would have to choose Journey. By the end of it I knew what was going to happen and still broke out in tears, and I dont think having the same partner for half the game helped with making me any less sad either. He/She was the best, we would always call out to eachother if we were in danger. Man im getting teary eyed again. Overall favorite ending, I cant exactly pick one since i cant remember but I always liked how Uncharted 2 finished, it would make me feel all sorts of emotions, enough to dive right back in for another run through. And for an older generation game i remember being happy and a huge sense of accomplishment from finishing mario sunshine although i dont even remember the ending that much, just the path to get there. The funniest thing of all though is that most of my favorite games through history, i havent even finished them.

<-- Portal 2= favorite.

Other great endings:

inFAMOUS 1/2

Uncharted 2

Red Dead Redemption

Bioshock

Dead Space 1/2

Mass Effect 2

Red Dead Redemption. That final duel has so much great catharsis. Oh, and that title card is fantastic.

@CyborgDuo said:

@Rebel_Scum: Sorry! I thought by putting the entire forum in spoiler mode that would be OK.

God that was in the title. <head slap> I missed that. Sorry.

The Saboteur, my favourite underrated game. Just walking through the Eiffel Tower in the black and white rain surrounded by hopeless Nazi's either about to kill themselves or already dead, then the final pay off of murdering Dierker all to the tune of the game's theme was awesome. You felt like you actually accomplished something and the tone matched that of the game perfectly.

The Good ending of Bioshock.

To the Moon, so beautiful and sad.

HL 2: Episode 2, yeah it's pretty much a cliffhanger but such a good one. I mean fuck. Black screen "Dad. No... don't leave me." I was shellshocked. Still gets me, hurts my heart.

RDR, kind of an obvious one. Everyone knows about it.

The Saboteur, it's just... kind of a mind fuck and not something you would expect from a final encounter with the main bad guy.

Dead Space 2, I liked the way the credits started scrolling and it was clear Isaac was just done, he didn't give a fuck, but he doesn't get his rest, there is someone who cares about him.

Limbo, Braid and Journey, all in a similar category of imagery implicating things to you but ultimately letting you decide what to take from it.

Edit:

@Zella said:

The Saboteur, my favourite underrated game. Just walking through the Eiffel Tower in the black and white rain surrounded by hopeless Nazi's either about to kill themselves or already dead, then the final pay off of murdering Dierker all to the tune of the game's theme was awesome. You felt like you actually accomplished something and the tone matched that of the game perfectly.

Oh I wasn't the only one then. It's definitely highly underrated game in all respects. I didn't kill him. I just stood there. I though to myself "jump motherfucker, jump" and surely enough he did. Not many thing are that satisfying. The music just tops it all off. Glorious.

The Saboteur, my favourite underrated game.

Quickly glancing through my library:

God of War III, MGS3, Prince of Persia (2008), Assassin's Creed(s) I and II, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, InFamous 2 (good), Enslaved, and Crisis Core.

Especially Prince of Persia.

Portal 2 takes the cake (no pun intended).

I don't think any game ending is good. If I did I would remember it and I don't remember any so there aren't any.

Persona 3 and Portal 2.

Those two had the kind of endings you keep thinking about days after you beat them.

To the Moon - an awesome story that climaxed at a loving, sad, emotional, tear-jerking ending. Despite the spoiler tag on the thread, I think the ending is too awesome to be spoiled, but I'm sure those who have played it will totally agree with me.